As usual the inspiration for this recipe came from the ingredients I had to hand and wanted to use, i.e in this instance, lots of sourdough discard, some goat’s cheese and pumpkin in my freezer.
Sourdough discard? What’s that some of you are asking. When you make sourdough bread, you must use a sourdough starter which is yeast but alive and fresh as opposed to “active dried” which is more common and can be bought in the supermarket. Everyday you must feed this starter with flour and water otherwise it goes to sleep and eventually dies if not kept in the fridge. Therefore you must “discard” some of this starter in order to make room for what you are feeding it, which is simply flour and water.
Set oven to 180°C/450ºF
Pastry
125g all purpose flour
5g salt
115g butter
100g sourdough starter
Place all the pastry ingredients in the food processor and blitz until it is just mixed. Scoop it out onto a floury, clean surface and roll to your desired size. You may need to add some water when mixing but go easy as the starter may well be enough to pull the pastry together. Don’t be afraid and precious with this pastry. Fit to the pie tin you are using and using a fork make some pricks all over the base.
Place in the heated oven and blind bake until it is dry to the touch and golden, maybe 15 to 20 minutes, while you get on with the filling.
Without washing out the food processor, put in all the filling ingredients and blend until smooth-ish.
Filling
2 cups fresh pumpkin
2 eggs
120g goats cheese
1/2 cup parmesan
handful coriander
salt and pepper
Fill your piecrust with the filling and place in the centre of the oven and bake until the filling is no longer wet, approximately 20 to 30 minutes according to the heat of your oven. Please keep a check on it as you don’t want it to dry out, or burn.